


Caritas

by osprey_archer



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Head Injury, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the dance of the Bull Calves, Lucius stops by to check on Alexios' head injury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caritas

Alexios was not sure how he made it through Mithras’ Midwinter gathering, with his head aching from the blow to his head from the dance of the Bull Calves. But somehow he did, and found himself sitting on the edge of his cot, one hand pressed over his black eye to ease its throbbing. 

It did not seem to be helping much. The pain pounded in his head, as the drums had pounded for the dance of the Bull Calves, and that thought seemed to set before Alexios’ eyes an image of the tumultuous dance, red-tinged and grotesque in his memory. The drums beat in his ears. 

Alexios shuddered and lifted his head, listening. But the night was quiet still, but for the wind off the sea; the drums pounded only in his mind. Mithras, he was tired, to be dreaming things awake. 

His head would be well enough in the morning, he hoped, if the pain lessened enough for him to sleep. It had to be. In the morning he must see the ringleaders, such as they were, and he would need his wits about him for that. 

He plucked at his cloak, then let his hand fall again in his lap. It seemed too much effort to undress. 

And it was well enough that he had not, for in a moment there was a knock on his door. “Commander?” said Lucius.

Alexios lurched to his feet, a sickness in his stomach that was not only from the ache of his head as he went to open the door. “Are they dancing again?” he asked. He did not think he could stop it now.

“No, sir, all is well. I only came to see how you are,” Lucius said, slipping past Alexios into the room. “It is not good to sleep with a wound to your head. I will help you keep awake.” 

Alexios could have wept. He wanted nothing in the world but to sleep, and who was Lucius to tell him no? But he swallowed it down, and asked, “Are you a surgeon?”

“No; but my father was,” Lucius said. He did not look at Alexios, but settled himself on the clothes chest, and took his well-worn linen scroll case from beneath his cloak. “These Georgics were his.” 

Alexios was surprised. It was uncommon among the Frontier Wolves for any to share stories of their past, and it seemed to Alexios simply another marker of his difference that they all knew the shame that had landed him among them. 

How had Lucius ended up with the Frontier Wolves? It was hard to see who could count him among the scum and scrapings of the Empire. Despite his aching head, a glimmer of interest rose in Alexios’ breast. He would not mind talking to Lucius for a little.

“I thought…I could read to you, if you like, sir,” Lucius said. 

Alexios almost groaned. It would have been well enough to talk of Lucius’s past, but to listen like a schoolboy while he read the Georgics? No. “My head is well enough,” Alexios said. 

“But still, you should not sleep on it just yet, sir,” Lucius said. 

Alexios did not want to argue medicine with a surgeon’s son. Instead he asked, “Should you not be at the meeting to worship your god?” 

“That is not till morning,” Lucius said. 

“It will be morning soon,” Alexios replied. The sky was not quite lightening yet, but it had the heavy darkness that came just before the beginnings of dawn.

Lucius was silent a moment. Then he shook his head, and said seriously, “He would rather I were here, to help you.”

Alexios was baffled. “But I am not his follower.”

“Nonetheless,” said Lucius, with quiet doggedness. “I am needed here.”

Something in Lucius’s voice pierced the fog of Alexios’ headache and exhaustion. He knew Lucius’s devotion to his god, still and quiet but deep; and he knew also that they were hardly friends, he and Lucius. It was kind indeed for Lucius to come. 

“If you are sure,” Alexios said.

“Yes,” said Lucius, and slid his beloved scrolls from their case. “I will start at the beginning. Unless you have a favorite?”

Alexios swallowed a sigh. “No, the beginning is fine.”

So Lucius unrolled his scroll, and set to reading. 

And indeed, it was not as bad as Alexios had thought it would be. No one expected him to remember anything, or recite, and Lucius had a fine voice. Not fine like a rhetorician’s, with stirring highs and somber lows; but soothing, like the waves on the shore. The waves seemed to rise before Alexios’s eyes: purple-black in the night, rushing across moon silver sands. 

Lucius’s hand on his shoulder broke his doze. “You must stay awake a bit more, sir,” he urged. 

Alexios blinked the sleep from his eyes and forced himself to sit straight. “Yes, of course. Go on.” 

And thus it went, as the sky began to lighten toward the dawn. Lucius read, and Alexios drifted on his voice till Lucius woke him again; and Lucius’s quiet voice slowly grew rough and husky, till at last Alexios thought to offer him some wine. 

The cup trembled as Lucius held it, and lifted it to his lips in both hands. _He is so tired,_ Alexios thought, and felt a moment of kinship to him. 

“Does your head still hurt, sir?” Lucius asked, when he had set the cup down. 

Alexios thought about it. His eyes stung with tiredness, and his black eye did ache still, but his head as a whole did not pound with the Bull Calves drums. “No; it is better.”

Lucius took another sip of wine. He held the cup in both hands, carefully, carefully: so as not to spill on his scrolls, Alexios thought, but there seemed to be something of ceremony in it. Alexios remembered, then, that the Christians drank wine at their holy rites: and it was almost dawn, on the morning of one of their holy days. 

“Go,” he urged. “You’ve seen me through the danger, I am sure.”

Lucius looked at the door, hesitating. Alexios felt a sudden warmth for him, for coming, and for thinking of staying when he so wanted to go. Impulsively he laid a hand on Lucius’s arm. “Thank you,” he said. 

Lucius looked away, scraping his feet across the floor. “It is I who should thank you for the wine,” Lucius said, and Alexios saw, uncomprehending, that he was embarrassed to be thanked. 

Alexios felt awkward too, in the face of that awkwardness. “It’s poor enough wine,” he replied. 

Then Lucius did smile. “Sleep,” he told Alexios, and gathered up his Georgics, and quietly left. 

Alexios settled himself under the striped native rugs. He ought to undress, he thought, but he was warm there, and sleepy, and had no desire to move. Outside the dawn seagulls called, and the lines of Lucius’s Georgics seemed to flow like waves beneath their cries. Virgil’s vineyard, in Alexios’ mind, became the orchard at the farm in the Downs; and beneath the soft green leaves of early summer, Alexios drifted to sleep.


End file.
